HHS Office of Inspector General Issues 2015 Work Plan (Part 1)

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently released its 2015 Work Plan. The OIG’s Work Plan outlines the reviews and activities the OIG plans to pursue during the 2015 fiscal year. Thus, the Work Plan gives health care providers an overview of the OIG’s enforcement priorities for the coming year.

The highlights from the OIG’s 2015 Work Plan are summarized in two separate posts. This first post focuses on hospitals, nursing homes, hospice, and home health providers.

Hospitals: The OIG’s 2015 Work Plan places a major emphasis on hospitals, focusing its review of hospital activities in 22 areas. For the first time, the OIG will focus on adverse events in post-acute care for Medicare beneficiaries. The OIG will estimate the national incidence of adverse and temporary harm events for Medicare beneficiaries who receive care in long-term care hospitals, identify factors contributing to these events, determine the extent that the events were preventable, and estimate the costs to Medicare. According to the OIG, long-term care hospitals are the third most common type of post-acute care facility and account for almost 11 percent of Medicare costs for post-acute care.

The OIG also is focusing on the following hospital-related policies and practices, billing and payment, and quality of care and safety areas.

The OIG will study the impact of 2014 inpatient admission criteria known as the “two midnight policy.” The criteria require physicians to admit for inpatient care only those beneficiaries who are expected to need at least two nights of hospital care. If the beneficiary’s care is expected to last less than two nights, the beneficiary should be treated as an outpatient. The OIG plans to study the impact of the new inpatient admission criteria on hospital billing, Medicare payments, and beneficiary co-payments, as well as determine how billing varied among hospitals.

The OIG will compare the Medicare payments for physician office visits in provider-based clinics and freestanding clinics to determine the difference in payments for similar procedures.

The OIG will determine the extent to which provider-based facilities meet the criteria of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The OIG noted the financial incentives to bill as provider-based facilities because provider-based status allows facilities owned and operated to bill as hospital outpatient departments.

The OIG will examine other policies and practices that include: reconciliation of outlier payments; costs associated with defective medical devices; salaries included in Medicare cost reports; and the payment policies for swing-bed services.

The OIG will examine other quality of care and safety issues in hospitals including hospital privileging, adverse events in inpatient rehabilitation facilities, and participation in projects with quality improvement organizations.

Nursing Homes: The OIG will review several areas relating to nursing homes, including Medicare Part A billing by skilled nursing facilities. The OIG stated that skilled nursing facilities increasingly bill for the highest level of therapy even though beneficiary characteristics did not change and that in 2009 skilled nursing homes billed one-quarter of all claims in error. In addition, the OIG will review questionable billing patterns for Part B services during nursing home stays. Congress directed the OIG to monitor Part B billing for abuse during non-Part A stays to ensure that excessive services are not provided. Of note, the OIG will also review the extent that Medicare beneficiaries in nursing homes are hospitalized for manageable and preventable conditions.

Hospices:The OIG will continue its focus on hospice care, specifically two areas in 2015: hospices in assisted living facilities and the use of hospice general inpatient care. As part of its review of the extent that hospice plans serve Medicare beneficiaries who reside in assisted living facilities, the OIG will determine the length of stay, levels of care received, and common terminal illnesses. The OIG’s work is intended to provide HHS with information as part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) requirement that CMS reform the hospice payment system, collect data relating to hospice payment revisions, and develop quality measures for hospice. The OIG will assess the appropriateness of a hospice program’s general inpatient care claims, including a review of hospice medical records to address concerns that the inpatient level of hospice care is misused.

Home Health Services:The OIG will review compliance with the home health prospective payment system, notably the documentation required in support of Medicare claims. In addition, the OIG will examine the extent to which home health agencies employed individuals with criminal convictions.

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